ZIMBABWE — HARARE - Queues lengthened outside commercial and building society branches in Harare as the run on banks continued amid an intense cash crunch compounded by the review of withdrawal limits to ZD20000 Monday.

 

Despite pledges from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and the Bankers Association of Zimbabwe that no bank was insolvent and depositors were not at risk over the acute shortage of cash, panic worsened dramatically Thursday.

 

 

ZimDaily heard that the RBZ was failing to account for almost three quarters of the cash in circulation, suggesting hoarding of cash by barons.

 

While the new currency was unavailable in banks, it was in abundance on the black market.

Measures by the central bank to allow holders of forex accounts to withdraw up to USD1000 daily while everyone jostle for the paltry Zimdollar is also worsening the cash crunch.

Fears of a systemic crisis in the Zimbabwean banking system took further hold today as tempers began rising as banks turned away thousands of depositors who clogged the banking boulevard along Samora Machel Avenue and First Street.

The new higher denomination currency introduced this week, the ZD20000 and ZD10000 bills have no reasonable security features and are printed on ordinary bond paper.

 

The new currencies has no water mark, no embedded RBZ string and is vulnerable to counterfeit.

 

On the black market, some Nigerian cash dealers were already duping hapless people with counterfeit notes of the new currency.

 

A wailing woman with a bunch of fake ZD20000 bills told ZimDaily she had lost USD500 to a Nigerian dealer in a deal gone bad.

Outside CABS along First Street, a long line of impatient people waited in coils of queues, watched over by guards with guns.

Some had slept in the queue, others waited for days without managing to get into the bank because the queues were so long.

 

Ruvimbo, a mother of one from Highfield, told ZimDaily that she had queued since Tuesday and slept in the pavement since then but after three days she was still waiting.

"We are poor people and we just come here to withdraw the little money we have in the bank, but they don’t let me in and say go away and come back again tomorrow," Ruvimbo told ZimDaily.

 

"But they have told us we have to come again tomorrow. What are we supposed to do?" she said, adding that her anger was mounting as she had been waiting for four days.

In addition to the long queues, the value of the Zimdollar is rapidly weakening at an unprecedented rate since the introduction of the new currency on Monday, together with prices of basics which are skyrocketing at an alarming rate.

 

The Zimdollar was trading at ZD5500 Thursday up from ZD1000 Monday on an illegal but thriving black market. Depositors demanded that the closing time for banks be extended from 15:00 to 20:00 (local) to allow more people to access cash.

There is been no official response from the central bank. But prime Minister-designate Morgan Tsvangirai was mobbed as he toured the banks weekend.

 

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